stitchintime

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Dreary weather. We were rewarded with a huge rainbow though. I don't know what it is about up here, but there seems to be more rainbows than back home in California. Maybe because there is more rain here? I don't know, but I love rainbows, so I'm in a good place! I know that picture isn't the best, but I haven't figured out how to get more color into a grey day.

The wind came up pretty big today too. I'm not used to that here. Back in CA, we had high winds a lot. Of course, there, I was right on the coast. Here I'm inland about 75 miles. (Weird for me, I was raised at the oceans edge.) I'm still surrounded by water. There is a river about a half mile to the east of me and the Strait of Juan de Fuca is about two to three miles north of me. I'm good with that. as long as there is water to look at. Of course, I get gigantic puddles in my driveway whenever it rains all day, so there's that!

Yeah. The wind. It made my goats' shed go boom!

It's kind of hard to tell by the picture, but that is the inside of the shed looking at it from the bottom. Those whitish strips you see are the ribs on the inside ceiling. The door is at the top. When the wind has let up, we will go figure out how to make it right side up again and then figure out how to keep it that way. Geez! Farm life is never dull. Never.

Since I have lived here (January 26, 2014) I have been gaining weight like an idiot. At first, I was more active and could handle the amount of food I was eating. I have COPD, and that started getting worse and the doctor didn't get me on the best meds he could have, so I had to slow down quite a bit. That just made it worse and I got a little depressed, therefore, since chocolate makes most of us feel better, chocolate became my best friend. Then last winter things blew up a little here and my daughter who moved up here with me, left on horrible terms. (We have since started talking again...but...) I was alone here for my first Northwest winter. I just sat in a corner with the heater and TV on, and ate. Chocolate had invited all it's other feel good friends to my pity party. All this is to say, I have finally come to my senses and joined WeightWatchers. So, warning, I am probably going to bore you with all the facts of my weight loss journey. I'm putting it here, so I can watch my self grow in health and shrink in size. I have to. It's not doing my breathing any good. My knees are screaming at me, my ankles are screaming at me...my sensible head is screaming at me. Wish me luck...please?

Oh yeah. One more item of my life's goings on this week. (of course, it's THIS week) My middle daughter has decided to start helping me straighten out my sewing room. I am in the middle of finishing up really late birthday presents, I got some Christmas presents done, I am going to make stockings for my oldest daughter and her room mates. Then there are the dish towels I may or may not get to. I don't like the towels I got. I may just relegate those to my own kitchen and find some better towels to offer up as gifts. We'll see. It's only 25 days til Christmas and these have to get shipped to California! Accckkk!

Monday, November 14, 2016

I managed to get three small projects done yesterday and today. I could have gotten more done but I am slow to learn the right way to do stuff. Maybe I just like the challenge of picking stitches out and see how fast I can do that...I don't know. On all of these projects I had to get the seam ripper out. Oh well, they got done and I am pleased with them.

Two of the projects are pillow cases for my niece and one nephew. Tomorrow I will do the second nephew's pillow case. I watched Missouri Start Quilt Company's tutorial for making these cases and it's really a straight forward tutorial. I did French seams, so there are no raw edges anywhere. That way the kids can be kids with them and they will hold up. Here they are!

The lighting sucks. Sorry. The ballerina case is pale pink and the band is a brighter pink, the cuff is pale apricot. I love the colors in that one. We all know what colors John Deere stuff is. The tractors and other equipment are on a two tone brown plaid. My other nephew plays football so his is a blue, white and black football themed fabric with blue and white accents.

I didn't take a picture of the little sewing organizer. I did it with scraps of fabric I had hanging out. I made it pretty bright and fun.

Progress has not been made on my pallet barn. Now I am thinking I need some of the materials from that to cover my chicken coop better. It's a mud hole! Except one small area where the food is and every time I go out to feed them I take my life into my hands walking through the mud to give them all fresh water and food. I know for sure by next winter that will be changed. I can't do this anymore. Slowly but surely I am learning what does and doesn't work. (And then things will change, so all my changes will have to be changed...but that's life, right?)

The time change is killing me. I'm north enough that the sun goes down early in the day during the winter anyway, the time change means that at around 4:30 in the afternoon, I'm thinking it's getting close to bedtime! I don't think I will ever get used to it. During the summer months it's fun, the sun is still up and shining brightly at nine or ten at night. I like that!

I'm off to go cook dinner. Breaded pork chops tonight. I don't know what else though. I'll just have to see what strikes my fancy when I look in the fridge! Have a good evening.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

This is Euphoria by Karen Sikie. I won this from QUILTsocial. I was so surprised. I haven't won anything in a while. Which is fine, I think I win everyday when I look on all the quilty goodness blogs out there and learn from all the talented people out there in bloggyland. This was just the icing on the cake!!!

These are 1/2 yard pieces of really yummy fabrics. I can't wait to use them. I am thinking that I could make a nice wall hanging for my front room. I have one wall in there that is such a luscious color of red, but the other walls are a golden yellow and I think this will do well on the golden yellow wall, dress it up really nicely. My poor walls are bare because I can never decide where to put what. I forget I am not renting and if I put a little hole in the wall in the wrong place I won't get into trouble...it's MY wall!

Then there are these great little butterflies to go with it. I'm going to have so much fun with this! Sorry about all the wrinkles. I was too excited to share with you to stop and iron it all!

I just love this fabric! You all should head on over to QUILTsocial and check it out. There is all kinds of fun stuff there, including tutorials, which is why I went there in the first place. Now it is on my favorites list...I'll be going back more and more!

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

I started a table runner for my sister out of a batik charm pack I had wanted to play with. I also used a jelly roll that I bought which turned out to be the wrong color for the project I was going to use it in. I used maybe two strips of it for the table runner. I used more of the batik pieces. I had cut those in half and then cut five inch pieces out of the jelly roll strips. Sorry, I haven't taken a picture of the table runner. I guess I was too excited about this impromptu flimsy I did.
I just started sewing the cut charms after laying them out together in like colors. I did a "pattern" of sorts by just grabbing the top piece of a pile sewing it on the strip, then taking the top piece from the next pile and so on. I only stopped when I ran out of jelly roll strips. Then I started a "strip race". That always goes really fast once you get past sewing the first two strips together. I couldn't wait to see how it would come out. I knew it was going to be very light with some flashes of color.

Jelly Roll/Batik, strip race

That was fun! There would have been more color, but there were a lot of natural background pieces among the pieces of batiks, I supposed I could have pulled those out and added in the left over color pieces I have. I just didn't think about how it would work out. I like it anyway. I have no clue where I am going with this from here. I am thinking about an organic quilting, maybe curvy lines along the seams, maybe even some decorative stitches from the machine. I could go many ways with this since it is so open.

I am starting to gear up my brain to do a quilt called Labyrinth. I had seen a picture of it on Pinterest and then a girlfriend sent me a link on Facebook. I figured that was a sign. Then the very next day I found the pattern for it at my LQS! Of course I bought it! I am now going to go and pick up the fabrics for it. I'm doing it in purples. Although purples probably won't look wonderful in my bedroom. I might have to give it to someone else, we'll see. I may be too attached to it after I spend the winter working on it!

Speaking of seasons...fall came to my neighbors yard. I have some fall in mine but most of my trees are evergreens, so I don't get the color like my neighbor did.

He does a wonderful job keeping his yard nice. I was talking to him today when I was out taking pictures of the flimsy. He was out draining all his irrigation pipes. I water with hoses and those have been hung out to dry for a while now. As soon as the rains come back I start putting my stuff away. No need to water when Mother Nature takes care of that for me.

The pallet barn had to be set on the back burner for a while. I don't know when it will get finished. The poor room mate was rear ended last Thursday evening. Some teen aged boy, not paying attention. The room mate seems to have a pretty bad case of whip lash. He is at the emergency room right now seeing if they can get some X-rays to tell if there is any worse damage. I just got off the phone with my insurance adjuster. GAH! Accidents are such a pain in all aspects of the word!

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Salty Dog

Me, in a nutshell

Where do I start? I own a small farm, though, since it's mainly animals, some call it a ranch...I have dogs, goats, a horse and a half, chickens, geese and rabbits. I like to sew, quilt, crochet, weave, bead, bake, and cook. I'm a fairly new transplant from the San Francisco Bay Area to the northest part of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington.